In for-profit companies such as an enterprise (joint-stock company), efficient business management is required in order to make a more profit by increasing sales and cutting cost. Accordingly, the manager has to grasp the problems on the management of his/her own enterprise, and considers from necessity what should be improved in order that the purpose of making a more profit can be attained. Further, the manager has to adopt plans of measures expected to obtain the utmost effect with limited funds at the time of consideration.
However, all of corporate managers cannot always form appropriate plans of measures to solve the problems on their business management. For example, there are a lot of inexpert corporate managers. There are enterprises employing a management system in which a plurality of departments constructing the enterprise are treated as independent enterprises and the management of department is delegated to the chief of each department. There are cases where such departments are established as other enterprises. In these cases, the chief of the department acts as a corporate manager in charge of the department. However, the chief of the department, who was one of the corporate members heretofore, generally has less experience in management. Hence, there are many cases where he/she asks for assistance in forming plans of measures for management reforms.
Such inexpert managers would intend to obtain knowledge helpful to the management reforms from various kinds of books as references. In fact, a lot of books about business management are issued. For example, such books include ones which scholarly describe business management, ones which introduce procedures of reforming business management based on a model particularly set, ones which mainly describe financial analysis and the like, and ones which introduce procedures of supply chain and the like.
For example, with respect to finance, methodology of finding measures by analysis of financial condition based on financial statements and the like are disclosed in the books about finance. Namely, with respect to finance, the financial condition of an enterprise can be generally indicated in the form of financial statements, regardless of the form of enterprise. Thus, there may be mentioned that financial management can be dealt with on the basis of the knowledge from the books about finance in many enterprises.
However, for an individual operation process such as manufacturing process in manufacturing industries, general methodology like financial analysis has not been established yet. Accordingly, it is difficult to find books directly helpful to forming plans of measures for management reforms, which is proper to an individual enterprise. Enterprises, which have the good fortune to agree with a model set in a certain book, can refer to the model. However, a number of enterprises hardly agree with models described in books. Thus, it is difficult to deal with reality of the management only with relying on the knowledge from the books.
Meanwhile, among corporate managers, there are persons who have much experience in business management. They were engaged upon the business management in various kinds of enterprises, and actually carried out management reforms to gain success. These successful persons did not always make good job in forming plans of measures from the beginning. They built up their experience in various kinds of failures so that they learned how to form plans of measures to deal with various situations, it leading them to current success. Namely, for forming plans of measures for management reforms, a lot of experience in judgment of which measures should be selected from various plans of measures, based on the current condition of the business operation, is required. However, it is obviously impossible to expect inexpert managers to have experience in forming plans of measures. Consequently, it is desirable that an excellent person who has the above-mentioned experience would be invited to an enterprise in need of management reforms and would participate in the management team. Also, it is desirable to assist an inexpert manager in management reforms by asking for advice from such experienced manager.
However, most of such excellent and experienced persons (managers) are usually engaged in the management of a particular enterprise and extremely busy. Therefore, there are few persons who can transfer to another enterprise or managers who can afford to give advice to another enterprise. Thus, it is in fact difficult to adopt the above-mentioned means in all of the enterprises in need of management reforms. In this respect, the same difficulty can be applied to a case where an excellent management consultant is invited. Furthermore, high cost is necessary for inviting an excellent person, therefore, it is difficult for a small-to-medium-size business in the cost.
By the way, there is a possibility that an experienced manager or consultant errs in his/her judgment. Therefore, it is preferred to verify the adequacy of the plans of measures for management reforms, which is planed out by himself/herself, before putting the plans of measures into practice. However, there has been no technology that can assist in such verification.
In the case of various kinds of corporations (juridical persons) such as charitable corporations that carry on the non-profit business, or organizations such as government and municipal organizations, it is required to efficiently proceed with their business operation within a limited budget. Accordingly, the management reforms in the business operation of these non-profit organizations involve the same problem as in a for-profit enterprise. Consequently, the term “enterprise” used herein refers to an entity carrying on business operation, which includes not only for-profit enterprises but also individually owned companies and non-profit enterprises.
An object of the present invention is to provide a technique for assisting in forming plans of measures for management reforms, which is specific to an individual enterprise, independent upon the amount of experience of the planner, and to also provide a technique for assisting in verifying the formed plans of measures.